


the water always wins in the end

by vailkagami



Series: Endings [2]
Category: due South
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:11:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3220220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vailkagami/pseuds/vailkagami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is killing Fraser from within. An old ritual is supposed to help him find and fight the reason, but maybe Fraser doesn't belive it can and maybe he doesn't even care all that much.<br/>It helps him find <i>something</i>, in any case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the water always wins in the end

The sky is a clear blue and the sun carries the first hint of spring and warmth when Benton Fraser closes his eyes. It is gone when he opens them, replaced by a ceiling made of wooden boards. The earth has become wood, too, but the sun is still shining, its bright light falling in through the large windows from a soundless outside.

Benton has come here without expectations, but he finds himself surprised none the less. It’s a place he knows, naturally. It is not a place he thought he would ever see again, not even here.

The cabin is bigger than he remembers it. This room wasn’t as big when he built it, didn’t need to be. There are doors, all of them open, and he doesn’t remember there being so many rooms. Just this one, his bedroom, Ray’s. Now he sees a corridor that never existed. There are no pictures on the walls, no carpets on the floor, no shelves. The space where the kitchen used to be is empty.

Benton stands still for a long time. Listening. There is no movement here, no sound. He senses no danger. He knows why he is here but he doesn’t know why he is  _here_ . This place of all holds, perhaps, significance, but few memories. It is not a battlefield. If anything, it is a grave.

Perhaps therein lies the answer. Whatever it is that is haunting him might have won, or might have chosen this place for him, in some way, as a warning or a promise of the outcome. Benton can only speculate, but at this point, speculation will not help him. His analytical mind notes, in the margins, that the light is falling in identical measure through all the windows, no matter what direction they face. The observation holds no meaning.

He doesn’t know if he is already being chased or if he has to be the hunter here. The old woman has been vague about it. Perhaps she didn’t know.

He closes his eyes and tries to hear her chanting but there is only silence here. It’s peaceful.

He takes a step. His boots create a sound then, quiet but clear in the stillness. He cannot avoid these sounds unless he takes the boots off and leaves that part of himself behind, but then, he did not come here to run and hide. To the left he finds Ray’s bedroom, never used, and his heart is pounding when he enters it, in dread or anticipation. But there is nothing inside. It’s an empty room that holds significance only because he knew what it was meant for and no phantoms are hiding in the corners.

His own bedroom must be down the corridor that has not been there before. This is a scene constructed from his memories and he wonders if there is a meaning to the fact that it’s all wrong.

No shadow follows him as he walks down the hall but his own. He moves, slowly, carefully; he doesn’t know how much time he has but he needs to be cautious. What is killing his body might be able to kill his soul, too. Strangely, he feels no fear; barely trepidation.

He treats lightly and no floorboards creak under his weight.

The corridor is long, but not narrow. It is well lit by the light through the windows, but the doors here are closed. They let in more light when Benton opens them and leaves them open to the empty rooms they reveal.

Some rooms have furniture. Some have carpets, walked through and lovingly patched year after year. Benton recognizes everything in here, from childhood and Chicago and the brief time with Victoria in a cave. He finds the backpack he lost in the snow storm in the corner of one large room and thinks he smells her perfume, but other than that, the room is empty like any other room.

He begins to fear that he is alone and all of this is without point. Perhaps he will be stuck here, but no– Somewhere a clock is ticking. He has minutes to do what he came for. One less, it seems, for every door he opens.

The corridor doesn’t go on forever, yet it seems like there are a hundred doors left.

The next room down the line is not empty. There are books cluttered in simple shelves made of unpolished wood. There is a closet that contains a hundred things he holds dear. There is a bed, in the middle of the large room, with clean sheets and a wooden frame, and inside it, beneath soft covers, lies Ray; not ray Kowalski, who Benton build this house for, but Ray Vecchio for whom he gave it up, now lying curled up in this place of fragments and memory, in this sun lit room where everything feels peaceful and good.

Benton stays in the doorway for a long moment, and he wouldn’t be able to tell whether he’s frozen or simply unwilling to move. When he does move, eventually, it’s without any conscious decision to do so. His feet carry him to the bed and he sits down on the edge and his hand, large and callused, cups Ray’s cheek as if he had to make sure he is real. (He isn’t, of course he isn’t. But he feels solid and warm under his palm and for a moment Benton just  _forgets_ .)

Only then does Ray stir, and even then it is slow, careless, as if he were waking from very deep sleep to someplace completely safe. In all their time together, Benton has never seen his friend like this; so at peace, so content, as if there were nothing in the world he needed to do.

He opens his eyes only a little, blinks in the light, and when he recognized Benton he smiles and looks at him sleepily through long dark lashes. “Hey Benny,” he says, his voice rough from sleep. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

It sounds, somehow, like a genuine question. “Ten years.” Benton’s own voice is rough as well, because his throat is closing and it feels like any moment his lungs might give out. Ten years since that moment on the steps before Ray’s house; since a conversation where everything went wrong. Ten years since thinking about talking to his friend again, of catching him before he left, and not doing it.

“That long, huh?” Ray looks a little more awake, but not much. His gaze drifts through the room, barely focusing. “Nice here. Where are we?”

“You don’t know?”

“How could I? It’s yours.”

Benton doesn’t ponder this. “It’s my cabin in the Territories. Or rather, it was. I build it for Ray and me – Kowalski, that is – when it looked like he would stay in Canada indefinitely. It was too big for me alone, so I sold it when he left. I believe it belongs to a family of three now.”

“It must mean a lot to you.”

“I barely ever lived here. I don’t know why we are here, of all places.”

“Yeah, well. I leave the philosophical stuff to you. I’m sorry about Kowalski.”

He sounds like he means it. Benton is sorry, too. “We’re still friends. We just rarely see each other, due to the physical distance.”

“Why didn’t he stay?”

Benton gives a small smile. His hand has come to rest on Ray’s shoulder and doesn’t seem inclined to leave there. “I was unhappy about something that had nothing to do with him, but it made him unhappy, too. I think he thought I blamed him in some way. In the end I was unable to fix things between us.” It seems to be an ongoing theme in his life.

Ray looks at him for a long moment. “Don’t make it sound like that’s all on you. It always takes two, you know.”

“I wrote to you once,” Benton tells him, unable to hold the words back any longer. “A few months after you left. When no answer came, I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. I decided to respect that decision.” He decided not to make an effort for that friendship that once saved his life. The shame still burns, now more than ever.

“Aw, Benny. Wouldn’t have made a difference, would it? Don’t worry about it.”

“I didn’t learn the truth until two years later.” Benton sounds bitter now, because he is. Two years, and he never knew. If not for happenstance and Francesca slipping, he might still not know. It is one of the things he can never forgive himself for.

“Hey. If it was up to me, you’d never have learned about it at all.”

“I know.” Another thing Francesca let slip. It does nothing to make Benton feel better. “I’m sorry.”

“What for? It’s not your fault. If anyone has to apologize, it’s me.”

“If I hadn’t let you leave, if I had tried harder-”

Ray doesn’t let him finish the sentence. “Yeah. And if I hadn’t left. As I said, it takes two. And sometimes shit just happens, and it’s no one’s fault. At the very least, it’s not yours. At the end of the day, nothing that happened in Seattle had all that much to do with you.”

“But-”

“No. Something tells me we don’t have an awful lot of time so hear me out.” And there was something Benton had to do, wasn’t there? Right now it seems so unimportant, that his time is ticking away and something might seal his fate. “I know you have this habit of feeling responsible for everything, and it’s bullshit.” Ray blinks, slowly. He looks so tired, and his words are a little slurred, but full of certainty. “You weren’t the only content of my life. There were a lot of things that you had no part in, and a lot of them sucked, and nothing of that concerns you. In the end…” His words tail off and his breath evens out. Benton thinks, with something like panic in his heart, that he has fallen asleep again, but then Ray opens his eyes one last time, with obvious effort. “I’m happy you were my friend, Benny. That’s it. Let it go.”

‘ _How could I?’_ Benton wants to ask. _‘How can I?_ ’ No rhetorical question but a plea for help, because he is stuck in a moment that doesn’t seem to end, and maybe he never even knew it until now; that this empty ache in pit of his stomach is not simply a part of who he is.

But no words come over his lips for there would be no one to hear them. Ray has slipped back into sleep, deep and peaceful, from which Fraser would not want to wake him if he could. Because Ray is at peace and he holds no resentment for Benton, only fond memories of the friendship they shared.

A friendship Benton failed. The shame burns no less now, but something has shifted. Then Benton realises that something  _is_ shifting in this world around him, that something is moving and falling away, slowly. His time is running out, but he does not move to resume his search, to make this strange dream worth it because it already is. Ray’s hand is lightly grasping his; not holding on but offering comfort, as if to say it is okay, and Benton will take that even if it means this is the last dream he ever has.

The sensation of Ray’s fingers entwined with his is the last one to follow him into the long dark when everything around him fades away.

  
  


-

  
  


The sky is blue when Fraser opens his eyes, and he registers, somewhere in the back of his mind, the warmth of the sun on his face, breaking through the chill in the air. His limps are stiff with cold, however, even though his coat is warm and he has been lying on soft furs. The old wound in his leg aches when he sits up.

The ancient woman isn’t chanting anymore. She sits silently, watching him move through eyes that seem strangely large and black in her wrinkled, dark face. Fraser has no moment of disorientation, not a second of confusion upon finding himself in the real world again and that, in itself, is almost disorienting after all.

His fingers are icy cold, with no lingering warmth carrying over from wherever he has been.

He sits up and, with a sigh, buries his face in his hands, for a moment. Then he looks at her, meets her unwavering gaze with what he hopes looks like composure rather than emptiness. “I believe I failed.”

“I believe you are wrong,” she says gently.

“I did not find it. Whatever it is, it is still there.” Killing him, or so she said before. A warning and an offer, for a ritual almost erased from memory. Fraser looks down on himself, taking in the symbols she painted on his bare skin. More have been added while he was out. He does not know their purpose but believes that whatever they were supposed to do, they didn't.

“Or perhaps you have been looking for the wrong thing.” The old woman seems entirely unconcerned. “How are you feeling?”

Fraser opens his mouth to say he feels like he did before only to realise that it isn't true. He feels better. The twisting, pulling pain inside him is gone. It has been a part of him for so long that its absence almost feels like loss.

It's only been in recent months that it grew so strong he thought he was headed towards his grave. No doctor could find anything wrong with him. He had come to this woman for another reason and she had taken one look at him and claimed that there was a curse on him, some manifestation of ill will gnawing through his insides.

When she suggested this ritual it was his respect to her traditions that made him accept. It is only now that he realises he never expected it to work.

Her ritual was to send him into a world created by his inner self so he could find what tortured him and destroy it before it destroyed him. There had been a risk of it winning, or him never waking up again. He took it because he had nothing to lose.

“I found something else,” he says.

She doesn't seem surprised. “Did you.”

“An old friend,” he explains as if she'd asked. “He died long ago. It distracted me.” It had been so much more important.

“And yet it did you no harm?”

“No.” Fraser does feel better. Not good. Maybe a little more at peace. He knows it is a lie. “It was, however, a dream, as you know. A manifestation of my guilty conscience, I presume.”

“Was it? What did he say?”

“Not to blame myself.” Fraser shakes his head. “I fear I still do, as I am still at least partially to blame. I am not entirely certain why my subconscious expressed itself in such a way.”

“And yet you feel better.”

“I do,” Fraser admits. He does not believe it will last. Perhaps it is something in the herbs she is burning as they speak.

“But you still believe you are guilty.”

“I know I am.”

“Ah,” she says, knowingly.

Fraser waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn't. He has to ask. In the end, he does.

“If it was a part of yourself you spoke to,” she says in her wrinkled old voice, “ and you do believe that you are to blame, why would he say you aren't.”

Fraser doesn't have to think about it. “Because a part of myself longs for closure,” he explains what she ought to know. “A part of myself, I am ashamed to admit, longs to be forgiven.”

“So it was forgiveness he offered, then.”

She says it like she knows the answer is no. Not forgiveness. Absolution of all things he'd have to be forgiven for.

He has the reply on his tongue to argue this away, too, but she presses her finger to his lips and tells him, “Just accept what has been given to you, Child.”

He is not a child anymore. He is a grown man, an ageing man, who knows that all things come at a price, and he is very alone. The smoke that blows into his face smells like Dief on a rainy day. He closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them again she is gone, and he shivers in the icy wind.

  
  


-

  
  


The sky is fading into the violet of dusk, streaked with grey and yellow clouds when Benton Fraser opens his eyes for the final time and keeps them open until all the colours blur and become one. He doesn't know if his eyes remain open, forever gazing through the water and the ice at that unattainable sky or if, in the final moment, they close.

It doesn't matter, the way nothing matters anymore. Once, when he was young, he fell through the ice and Diefenbaker saved him before the cold water could demand its due. Now that he is old he broke through the ice again and Dief is long gone. In the end, the very, very end, the cold water won.

When Fraser's eyes get used to the light again, or maybe to the fact that they are seeing, the water and the cold are very far away. He recognizes the room he is in, this place. The wood underneath his feet, warmed by the sun falling in through the windows. The small kitchen and the support beam on the ceiling, plain but lovingly crafted. All the doorways without doors.

He feels no surprise upon being here – at best, there is distant anticipation, and peace. It is peaceful here. It has always been peaceful in this place.

Now there is movement where there was none before, when he last came here, some ten years ago. Shadows in the rooms and doorways that move only in the corners of his eyes, and he wonders, with distant curiosity, if he is somehow seeing the living through this veil of warm light and serenity; old friends and acquaintances, lives he touched in some way, occupying the spaces where he used to be.

He wonders if any time at all has passed between the river and the hall.

Hie feet make no sound on the floorboards and he realises he's not wearing his boots. They have been a part of him for so long and yet he did not even notice losing them. It is something he doesn't worry about. He worries about nothing.

He knows where to go. His feet can carry him there even without his boots.

The corridor seems as long as it was the last time he came here and yet the familiarity, the certainty shortens it. He knows where he is going this time. He finds the room without trouble and without surprise.

Ray is in the bed, sleeping peacefully, comfortably, the way he was all those years before. Benton tries not to wake him this time as he walks around the bed, pulls back the covers just enough. This time, he didn't come to talk.

Ray shifts a little and sighs in his sleep as Fraser settles against him, as he settles against Fraser. For a long moment Fraser focuses on the warmth, the calm heartbeat he feels underneath his palm, the shared breath, in and out, in and out.

Then he lets go of that, too.

  
  


22 January 2015

 

**Author's Note:**

> For my genprompt-bingo card. Prompt: _Ritual Marks and Body Decorations_


End file.
